Writing about Sapphire led me to musing about dog training, and from there, of course, I had to talk about what dogs have to do with wolves. Doing some research for the chapter uncovered a few surprises.

An aside: Sapphire in most of her life was dignified and polite. But she had one silly, endearing habit. She loved to chase rocks. And bark at them. The bigger the rock, the better. Here she is in 2005 at the age of twelve, just two months before she died, showing that rock where to go:

But I digress!

When it comes to dog training, one popular trainer, Cesar Millan, says that dogs are wolves, and wolves live in packs. Every pack has a leader, he says, and when it comes to good behavior in your mixed human-dog pack, it’s up to you to be the alpha dog, the leader of the pack. You are to be calm-assertive, and if you are, you will be rewarded with a calm-submissive dog.

Only there are a few problems with this theory:

Surprise #1: Wolves live in families, not packs.

Wolves, like all other mammals, live in families. Each family is led by a mother and father. A family may sometimes absorb an unrelated member or two. And very occasionally, two or three families may join together in a pack.

I read this info to my writers’ group, and everyone was just as amazed as I. All of us are nature writers of one sort or another. How did we not know this simple fact about wolves? I figured if five savvy women didn’t have a clue about wolf culture, probably a few others out there didn’t know either.

Surprise #2: There is no alpha wolf.

Instead, the father and mother together lead the family. The rest of the family is made up of children who are one or two years old plus the pups of the current season.

Here is animal scientist L. David Mech explaining. Dr. Mech is Senior Research Scientist for the US Department of Interior. He has researched wolves for more than fifty years:

Mech is honest about taking some of the rap for coining the term alpha wolf. But now, he says, it’s incorrect.

Surprise #3: The wolf parents do not dominate the rest of the family.

They lead, same as other mammal parents. They do not walk ahead of the others or do all the hunting or even all the training. The older offspring help socialize the pups and provide for them.

There is one sense in which the parents do dominate: They monopolize the food to ensure their own breeding ability and to prevent anyone else in the family from breeding. They also parcel out the food, sometimes preferring to give it to the newborn pups over the older siblings.

Surprise #4: Becoming the leader of a wolf family has nothing to do with dominance.

It has to do with growing up. Young wolves disperse when they are one or two years old, leaving the family unit to go find their own mate and their own territory. Most young wolves grow up to become a parent and leader in their own family.

Surprise #5: The father is not dominant over the mother.

At different times, the mother and father take turns deferring to the other. The mother might defer to the father in matters of food. But when she is holed up in the nursery with pups, the father approaches her with the same ears-down, tail-down, respectful posture.

Surprise #6: There is not a pecking order among wolves.

Some classic studies of wolves, done in the 1940s, found a pecking order among wolves similar to that among domestic chickens. But these studies were done on wolves in captivity, not in the wild. It would be about the same as inferring human behavior from people in refugee camps. Or people in prison—locked up, under surveillance, and under great stress.

Surprise #7: Wolves and dogs have different cultures.

They may share a similar physiology, but in terms of social organization, dogs have developed something wolves never did: sensitivity to humans. This study shows dogs being sensitive to human glances or body language at about the same rate as human infants—and both of them far more sensitive than wolves.

So how did the idea of dominance and submission come to rule dog training? It’s the topic for another day.

For more information:

• L. David Mech, “Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs,” Canadian Journal of Zoology 77, no. 8 (Aug. 1999): 1196–1203.
• Carlos Drews, “The Concept and Definition of Dominance in Animal Behaviour,” Behaviour 125, nos. 3–4 (1993): 283–313.
• James O’Heare, “Social Dominance: Useful Construct or Quagmire?” Journal of Applied Companion Animal Behavior 1, no. 1 (2007): 56–83.
• Lisa Mullinax, “The Dog Whisperer Controversy,” 4Paws University, available here.
• Anything by these animal behavior scientists:

1. Marc Bekoff—highly recommended, especially his recent work on a sense of morality among animals. See this post on “Wild Justice and Moral Intelligence in Animals” at Huffington Post.
2. Ray and Lorna Coppinger
3. Wendy van Kerkhove

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Wolves and dominance: the myth of the alpha dog

No related posts.

What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America

As an editor, I am paid to get inside the heads of authors. And Imam Feisal was generous in letting me get inside his. We spoke at length numerous times on the phone as we clarified the book’s message. What I found inside him bears no resemblance to the hateful images perpetuated by fearful people spreading messages of suspicion about a religion, and a project, they have not bothered to get to know.

What I experienced in working with Imam Feisal was unfailing graciousness. The person I learned to know has a deeply compassionate heart focused on one thing only: fostering more open dialogue and understanding between Muslims and people of the Western world. He is single-minded in this focus. His nonprofit Cordoba Initiative promotes interfaith dialogue.

The central message of his book is that the values that lie at the heart of Islam—equality and social justice—are the same values guiding the history of the United States. For years Imam Feisal has been saying loud and clear,

Our peoples are committed to the same values!

Which is why the anger and hate-baiting over the proposed cultural center are so profoundly disturbing.

And, let’s be clear: What is proposed is in fact a cultural center, not a mosque. Imam Feisal talks about the difference in this news conference:

It will be a cultural center because Imam Feisal is an educator. He believes that cultural exchange can help heal wounds between people tempted to see each other as enemies. It’s a trust in education deeply ingrained by his spiritual tradition of Sufism.

Back in the 1700s, in the face of a declining Ottoman Empire, two alternatives presented themselves to Muslim reformers. One was a legalistic return to the roots. This was the path chosen by al-Wahhab on the Arabian peninsula—purging Islam of anything not found at its beginning. Karen Armstrong in Islam: A Short History says,

Wahhabism is the form of Islam that is still practised today in Saudi Arabia, a puritan religion based on a strictly literal interpretation of scripture and early Islamic tradition. (135)

And because Saudi Arabia controls Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, as well as vast oil fields, the Wahhabi form of Islam holds tremendous sway throughout the Muslim world.

The other path was chosen by a Sufi reformer, Ibn Idris. This was the path of education. Improve society by teaching people to love God better—which in practice meant teaching people how to think for themselves by developing their own spirituality more deeply. Not too surprising that Ibn Idris sharply criticized al-Wahhabi for his legalistic tendencies.

In other words, Sufis are usually on the opposite side of the issues from fundamentalists. Which is why it is crazy to label Imam Feisal an extremist—crazy not just because to all who know him Imam Feisal is a progressive, deeply thoughtful scholar and teacher, but also because in the history of Muslim politics, Imam Feisal’s community has often been harassed, sometimes even banished, by fundamentalists.

How strange it is to see someone I deeply respect become such an object of controversy, even hate, in the American media!

I am proud to have contributed in even a small way to Imam Feisal’s work toward interfaith understanding. And I’m deeply disappointed by the depth of opposition to this center, which shows just how much more of it there is to be done.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON SUFISM:

• The journal Sufism, an Inquiry
• The many works of Sayyed Hossein Nasr, professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University
• Sufi music and my band fave, Ghazal

FOR MORE INFO ON IMAM FEISAL

• This interview in Shambhala Sun
• FAQ from the Cordoba Initiative on the proposed community center

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

What about that mosque at Ground Zero?

Related posts:

1. What the world needs now

The newsletters I send out will be different from the blog—more personal, with news of how the book is coming, and notices of events like readings and workshops.

Please, if you are interested, take a moment to fill out your first name and email. I promise, no more than one newsletter a month!

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Staying in touch

No related posts.

At the trailhead the last of the larkspur greeted us. Lauren said a week or two ago the trailhead was awash in larkspur. Now the larkspur gathering had shrunk, and a new purple flower had taken over: bee balm.

Bee balm has a stem that is square not round—a dead giveaway for the mint family (though there are a few plants besides mints that also have square stems). We rubbed its leaf between our fingers and sniffed. Sure enough, minty fresh, with the hint of something earthy and herbal. Wikipedia says it tastes like spearmint and peppermint mixed with oregano, which sounds about right.

Bee balm has an antiseptic in it, thymol, which is the active ingredient in most commercial mouthwashes. Next time you swig and swirl, think of the plant that provided that fresh taste. It’s got a lavender-pink flower that looks as fresh as its taste, and here in Colorado it blooms in late July along moist creeksides.

Seas of bee balm accompanied us as we made our way uphill.

The Anne U. White trail is special—a riparian corridor, which means the rippling sound of a creek followed us throughout the morning. The creek is Fourmile Canyon Creek, the northernmost tributary of Boulder Creek. It flows from its source in the mountains near the old mining town of Sunshine down to the plains, joining Boulder Creek near 63rd Street. The Boulder Area Sustainability Information Network has more info on this creek.

Hiking close to the creek, we were often shadowed under a canopy of trees. Creekside trails invite you in with their intimacy—just you, the willows, the rocks, the gurgling brook.

The trail crosses the creek several times, stepping-stones placed just right.

We kept heading up the gentle slope,

stopping now and then to sample berries or gaze at rock formations or get to know each other a little better.

Berry bushes were hanging thick with fruit. Wax currant bushes were everywhere, their fruit a small bursting bud in the mouth. Wax currants have a subtle flavor, not as sweet as raspberry, not sour like cranberries, just smooth and warm with a hint of tartness.

Lauren, our naturalist leader, likes to encourage people to nibble the berries. “Telling people not to pick the edibles just reinforces a feeling of separation from nature,” she says. “It’s all about connecting, interacting, with the nature that surrounds us.”

A good trail ethic is to nibble, not gorge. Remember the birds, bears, and people to follow you. We can all share.

And hope that any mountain lions lounging on the other side of the rocks

are not hungry at the moment. A trailside sign warns that this is mountain lion territory. Personally, I’d never let my dog off leash in this kind of country. Most of the hikers along the trail were following the same guideline. We met lots of people and dogs, and they were all polite. The mountain lions? We didn’t so much as catch a glimpse.

One more hazard: be on the lookout for poison ivy, with its three leaves. Poison ivy loves creeksides. And there is tons of it along this trail—more than I’ve seen anywhere else in Boulder County.

Every hike is a mix of old friends, like wild rose—the largest, showiest, and most fragrant wild rose I’ve ever met—

and milkweed, almost as fragrant and sweet,

with new friends, like curly cup gumweed. Notice the tiny curls around the bud. Squeeze the bud, and a sticky sap comes off on your fingers, strong like pine sap.

We saw two flowers none of us could identify. Native plant buddies, can you tell us what they are?

At the end of a mile and a half, we shed our shoes and socks and dipped our toes into the pool below a five-foot-tall waterfall. Ahhh!

To get to the Anne U. White Trail:

At the north end of town, turn west on Lee Hill Road. Go a mile and turn left on Wagonwheel Gap Road. Go another mile, to Pinto Road, and park. Do not park on the side of the road with the mailboxes; you will get a ticket. Or drive up Pinto Road .2 mile to the trailhead, where there are five parking spaces, and hope it’s your lucky day.

To join Lauren’s Meetup group:

Click here for the Boulder Naturalist Outings hosted by Lauren Kovsky. Lauren plans to organize an outing every other week. In addition to the scheduled hikes, she’s dreaming about tubing on Boulder Creek (downstream from downtown, where it’s calmer) and canoeing along a placid river.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Exploring the Anne U. White Trail

Related posts:

1. A cloudy-day hike at Chautauqua
2. On Green Mountain
3. On Marshall Mesa

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

That’s my town

No related posts.

“What about reciprocity?” I asked. At bottom, our ecological crisis boils down to one simple fact: humans are taking more than we’re giving back to the Earth. What if each of us started giving back as much as we take—in all our relationships, with the human and more-than-human worlds? Even a simple gesture like showing gratitude can make a difference. Everyone loves to be thanked! Reducing our use of unsustainable resources is a solid first step in giving back to the Earth.

What follows are 10 close-to-home ways you can give back to the Earth.

1. Eat closer to home. The average American foodstuff travels 1500 miles to reach the table. That’s an astronomical amount of fossil fuel used just in transporting the food, to say nothing of growing and packaging it. Until our fuel sources are more sustainable, perhaps those bananas or Australian wines (to pick two of my faves) should be a special treat, not a staple. For more info, see the energy stats at Sustainable Table.

2. Thank your food. Look, really look, at the plants and animals on your table. Notice each one. Think about the rice or oat or wheat grasses waving under the sun, the carrots developing underground, the strawberries ripening on the vine. Most of all, if you eat meat, think about every animal. Picture the cow grazing (if you eat cows, eat grass-fed, not corn-fed ones), the chicken scratching, the fish swimming, the life labor that the hen put forth in making an egg, the goat her milk. Thank each animal, every time, for the gifts of their lives and their bodies. Christians call it saying grace. Buddhists call it eating mindfully. All of us can thank the plants and animals. Our lives depend on them. Literally.

3. Pick your teeth the old-fashioned way. Wooden toothpicks are biodegradable, unlike the little plastic gadgets most dentists’ offices try to pass out to their patients. Those tiny plastic picks and brushes only end up in landfills—not a good way to give back to the Earth! Many of them escape down rivers, becoming part of the enormous swirling toilet bowls of plastic in our oceans and endangering the lives of seabirds. When your dentist offers you little plastic tools for dental hygiene, say no thanks.

4. Teach your children reciprocity. Even small children understand fairness. No one wants to get the short end of the stick. Teach your children to give back when they receive something. Practice it yourself. If each of us truly gave as much as we took, the world would change.

5. Thank a tree. As you walk down your street, notice one tree or plant every day. Thank it for making oxygen. Your life depends on it.

6. Work to reduce pesticide use in your area. We all know about pesticide use in agriculture, but pesticides are used at an equivalent rate on suburban lawns. What about the playing fields at your local school? (Fungicides and herbicides are pesticides too.) Children absorb more pesticides per pound of body weight than do adults, according to the National Academy of Sciences. Next on my to-do list: a letter to my local HOA about the annual pesticide application on our pristine common lawn. I’d really rather have a common area that my dog—and all the children on the street—can run and play in safely. For more info, see the “Lawn Care” page at Beyond Pesticides.

7. Refuse overpackaging. Say no thanks to foods or supplements prepackaged in tiny portions. Every piece of plastic ends up in a landfill—if we’re lucky and it doesn’t end up on beaches or in the ocean. Though I love a certain brand of rice cheese, I’m giving it up because it is packaged in individual slices wrapped in plastic.

8. Host a zero-waste party. It’s easier than you think. Paper plates and cups can be composted in municipal composting processes, and cornstarch-based compostable flatware is becoming easy to find. To use even fewer resources (except for water), visit your local thrift store and buy a few dozen older plates and forks and wash them afterward. If you don’t have room to store them, donate them back after the party’s over. Same with napkins and glasses. I spent $25 at a thrift store for my last party and then got credit afterward for the same amount in donation. That thrift store benefits a nonprofit group, so when they sell their merchandise twice they raise even more money.

9. Volunteer for a cleanup or restoration project in your area. People have no idea how much fun these projects are. You get the pleasure of meeting like-minded neighbors in addition to the joy of giving back to the Earth in a very direct way. The sense of camaraderie and a deep-seated satisfaction after a day or a half day of work keep restoration volunteers coming back time after time. They look forward to having more fun. For a list of organizations working in ecological restoration around the country, see Global Restoration Network.

10. Work for the circle of life in your industry. I was astonished to learn recently that nearly half of GM plants are now “nil to the landfill.” If an industry like auto making can stop sending materials to landfills, certainly other industries can follow suit! How did the Earth survive for billions of years, perfecting the ability to sustain life? By a system of exchange in which every part of the whole gives off something others need. One species’s waste is another species’s fuel. What the organisms of Earth have been doing for billions of years, we will have to learn to do in every industry. Waste to fuel, around the circle. That means finding ways to break down plastics, mop up oil spills, and treat sewage by contributing something that someone else in the ecosystem needs. Interdependence is the name of the survival game. What if you are not an engineer or inventor? Then start with recycling. Even your office could be zero waste.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

10 ways to give back to the Earth

Related posts:

1. Reciprocity
2. Earth is the new bottom line
3. In defense of food

In the native plant garden at Chautauqua, the other volunteers and I spend hours digging it out, trying to prevent it from choking out the precious native wildflowers. All, it seems, to no avail. Bindweed is a public enemy—out to take over the world.

Or is it?

As I was sitting in the dirt at Chautauqua digging with a Japanese hori—nothing less than this wicked, six-inch, serrated blade like a hunting knife will do for tackling the underground runners—I started wondering about our nemesis.

If bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis L.) is native—and it is, despite the fact that we dig it out of the native garden—what services might it be providing to the ecosystem? You have to think that since it coevolved with all the other grasses, flowers, and animals of the region, it must be doing some good. What does it contribute to sustaining life?

The first clue came from our naturalist leader, Dave Sutherland. “Bindweed likes disturbed soil,” he says. The plant is opportunistic. It takes advantage of damage to the surface, running its surface vines quickly over bulldozed, plowed, and trampled earth. We can view opportunism as a vice, and the tone people use when they say this about a plant or a predator often carries more than a hint of disdain. But there is another way to look at it. I think of the bindweed I saw last week along the edge of a trail, rich with its pinkish morning-glory blooms:

This ground was disturbed by building a road. The bindweed is rushing in to fill in the gap in ground cover. I was impressed by the evenness of its march, as if it was intending to spread itself like a mat across the naked soil. It knows what heedless humans didn’t when they cleared the prairies to plant grains—that disturbed soil will blow away into dust. That especially in the arid climates of the western United States, soil is precious and, because it is dry so much of the time, must be guarded by vegetative cover. So:

Gift #1: Bindweed guards the soil.

No surprise, then, that to control bindweed on a large scale, plant ground covers. Do the job of bindweed so it doesn’t have to work so hard. This site from the UK reports planting a common ground cover to discourage bindweed in vineyards. When the ground is protected, bindweed is less aggressive.

In fact, says herbalist John Slattery of Desert Tortoise Botanicals in Arizona, an overgrowth of bindweed is evidence that the soil has been mistreated—exposed by road cuts or housing developments, trampled or dug up or bulldozed. It turns out that bindweed is especially fond of cultivated land because the plant thrives in nitrogen-rich environments, such as croplands, suburban yards, and gardens—all thick with fertilizers. So:

Gift #2: Bindweed indicates the health of the soil.

Too much bindweed—evidence of soil out of balance.

My friend Molly Bigknife Antonio alerted me to a further gift of the plant. Molly and her husband, Gino, through their nonprofit Pollen Circles lead summer camps in Navajo land training kids in traditional skills and knowledge. When Molly gave a presentation at Prescott College in April, I was astonished to see a slide of bindweed—prized for its traditional medicinal uses. For details she sent me to John Slattery, who pulled together the ethnobotanical info. Turns out bindweed is used to help digestive ailments, spider bites, skin disorders, and excessive menstrual bleeding (more info below). Traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) is a good place to turn for finding redeeming value in even pesky weeds. So:

Gift #3: Bindweed is traditionally used as medicine for a variety of ailments.

But wait, there’s more! Western scientists too have been studying bindweed and finding it effective against cancer tumors. Here’s how it works: tumors enlarge by growing blood vessels (angiogenesis) so they can import more life-giving blood. One promising avenue of cancer research is finding substances that inhibit the growth of a tumor’s blood vessels (antiangiogenesis). A tincture of bindweed root seems to do just that. This study (unpublished?) showed a nontoxic form of the tincture shrinking tumors in mice. So:

Gift #4: Bindweed may help shrink tumors.

I find it interesting that what bindweed appears to do maliciously in gardens—choke the life out of plants—may be exactly what it does medicinally when used in the right proportion—inhibit unwanted growth. Its gift may reside in its curse. This public enemy, from a different perspective, may be one of our greatest friends.

The magic of this world—hiding gifts in weaknesses, disguising friends as enemies—at work in every square inch of the earth.

Even in bindweed.

For more info:

Thanks to John Slattery of Desert Tortoise Botanicals for documenting these uses of bindweed from the traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) of American Indians:

• Navajo, Ramah (Dermatological Aid)
  Cold infusion of plant taken and used as a lotion for spider bites.
  Vestal, Paul A. 1952. The Ethnobotany of the Ramah Navaho. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology 40(4):1-94 (39).

• Navajo, Ramah (Gastrointestinal Aid)
  Cold infusion taken with food after swallowing a spider.
  Vestal, Paul A. 1952. The Ethnobotany of the Ramah Navaho. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American
  Archaeology and Ethnology 40(4):1-94 (39).

• Pomo (Gynecological Aid)
  Decoction of plant taken for excessive menstruation.
  Gifford, E. W. 1967. Ethnographic Notes on the Southwestern Pomo. Anthropological Records 25:10-15 (15).

• Pomo, Kashaya (Gynecological Aid)
  Decoction of stem with leaves taken for excessive menstruation.
  Goodrich, Jennie, and Claudia Lawson. 1980. Kashaya Pomo Plants. Los Angeles: American Indian Studies Center, University of California (73).

• Okanagan-Colville (Cordage)
  Stems used as a pack rope for carrying birds and marmots home after hunting.
  Turner, Nancy, R. Bouchard, and D.I.D. Kennedy. 1980. Ethnobotany of the Okanagan-Colville Indians of British Columbia and Washington. Victoria: British Columbia Provincial Museum (96).

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Even bindweed brings gifts

Related posts:

1. 8 reasons to go native in your yard

Insects were busy everywhere, buzzing, flying, sipping, mating. A big black bug zoomed down the center of the trail and contacted my shirt, where it clung as if astounded. I’d never seen this beautiful blue exoskeleton with black dots. Turns out, I believe, to be a pleasing fungus beetle, which explains why it was none too pleased when I encouraged it onto some grass stems. It was looking for mushrooms instead. (Thank goodness for autofocus cameras. Point toward self and shoot. Not perfectly sharp, but not bad.)

Farther in, a small patch of penstemon and Indian paintbrush beside the trail quietly astounded in shades of deep orange and blue. You’ll never find paintbrush alone because it is a partial parasite, sending fingers into the root systems of others to get food. It completes the cycle of reciprocity by giving away its nectar to hummingbirds:

On the Fowler Trail, if you choose the right fork twice, after about a mile you’ll find yourself heading down, down toward a creekbed. (At the second fork, if you had taken a left, you would be on the Goshawk Ridge Trail. Go. I beg you. The flowers in June are astounding.) On the way down, a small stream cuts across the trail. This was my turnaround point; the ankle had begun to throb. I sat on a shady flat rock, shed my sock and shoe, and dunked the ankle in cool, squishy mud. Ahhhh! A little blue butterfly puddled in the sun next to me—and this photo is really out of focus so I’ll keep it tiny. I love watching these small butterflies—blue coppers?—and have been known to lose an hour reveling in their lilac-tinged iridescence. On a lucky day you can find groups of them puddling together.

After some minutes, two feuding songbirds squawked into view. I grabbed my binoculars—yes! The electric blue heads of lazuli buntings, my first of the season. Gorgeous! They soon took their dispute elsewhere, and I focused on the roots of a bank-hugging tree slithering around rocks with the grace of a great, ancient lizard:

All too soon it was time to pull my foot out of the soothing mud and head back to the car. Along the way I spotted the first stonecrop of the season. For good reason it’s called stonecrop, usually jutting straight out as if from rock:

The final highlight of the hike was this butterfly probing delicately into dried-up dog poo. It is a western white Weidemeyer’s admiral, which likes to hang out on gravel and is often found on animal droppings. Apparently these butterflies need salts, minerals, and proteins that can’t be found in nectar, so they choose what to me is an unsavory menu—a great reminder of the cycle of life, where one person’s waste is another one’s lunch.

This one walked gently upon its feast, occasionally opening and closing its wings. I had to anticipate the rhythm to get a shot of wings open:

I left it perched at lunch, wings closed, a shard of the finest stained glass wedged in offal.

Safely back at the car, I realized the ankle had managed two whole miles. Yippee! No more being sidelined when spring is in bloom.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

On the way to Goshawk Ridge

Related posts:

1. Thumb Butte
2. The native garden in June
3. A cloudy-day hike at Chautauqua

Today the blue mist penstemon was out in force:

As well as the lupine:

I said the volunteers have been tending these plants. Actually, we did very little—deadheading the plants in April, then some weeding of invasive nonnatives like dandelions. But for ease of care, native flowers can’t be beat. The garden will be lush throughout June as long as showers keep coming.

The wild rose bush is nearly as tall as me, its pink-shaded blossoms just beginning to open:

Earliest-blooming flowers are entering their final stages. Pasqueflower and prairie smoke both sprout a crop of fuzzy tendrils—what my friend Carolyn likes to call Phyllis Diller hair. Here’s pasqueflower before and after:

And prairie smoke with its new do:

After checking up on the garden, I tested my sore ankle—almost three weeks since the sprain—on the Mesa trail, just in time to enjoy a fringe of blue beyond the Flatirons:

Up close, the prairie is bursting with wildflowers. Today the lavender one-sided penstemon reigns:

Twenty minutes on the trail—woo-hoo! The ankle is nearly healed.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

The native garden in June

Related posts:

1. 8 reasons to go native in your yard
2. On the way to Goshawk Ridge
3. On Marshall Mesa

I had headed out the back door to look at lilac buds on the cusp of bursting into full bloom. But we just moved into this house ten days ago, so I wasn’t expecting the extra step down to the deck. My weight landed on the side of the step, my foot rolled under, and I crumpled to the deck in a lurch of pain.

The deck is tiny, and so fresh green grass beckoned just a few feet away from where I lay feeling a wave of nausea begin to rise. I crawled off the deck and collapsed into the dirt. Instantly the nausea ebbed. The thick, tall grass smelled cool and fresh, and I sucked in the fragrance as the pain slowly ebbed. The sharp scent of the grass cleared my head, giving me more resources for dealing with pain; the cool damp earth felt soft and welcoming.

But what to do now for the ankle? Ice, of course, Arnica too, then Ibuprofen. But the image that rose first in my mind was that of a mud poultice.

Now I have never used a mud poultice, have never been taught to use one, and have never seen one used. I was aware that American Indian cultures often advised direct contact with the earth to heal many kinds of ailments, but I had no memory of reading about poultices. But the mental picture was insistent—fresh mud on the injured tissue, it suggested.

My sweetie helped me hobble inside to the sofa, then he grabbed a shovel and headed to the side of the house. He gathered some damp earth into a container, added a few drops of water until the mud was a thick paste, and then, with a spoon, applied it to my ankle. An old dampened towel went over the mud, and we wrapped foot and mud together in more dry towels.

Instantly the ankle felt better. I don’t know how to describe it—a freshness that felt almost minty on the skin; a cool, soothing weight across the wound that was softer and more even than an athletic bandage, like being hugged just right. “It feels like love,” I told my sweetie. “Mud love.” Who knew soil holds compassion?

I am sitting on the sofa today with another mud pack on the ankle, and it feels just as fresh and soothing as last night. A Google search tells me that mud packs are good for keeping swelling down in sprains. In fact, for the extent of damage, the ankle is only slightly swollen.

The doctor who looked at the ankle this morning was surprised to find that the wound was not hot to the touch. She thinks nothing is broken—thank goodness—but I will need to keep weight off it for a few days. So it’s onto crutches for a while.

I would love to hear others’ experiences with mud packs or poultices, including what you know about the medicinal value of mud. I highly recommend the mud pack for a sprain. Be ready, though, when you’re done for the whole to look like a “soiled” diaper!

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Mud love

Related posts:

1. 10 things to love about dirt